Life of Samuel Johnson, LL.D.
Overview
The makers of Encyclopaedia Britannica bring you one of the Great Books of the Western World. This text captures major ideas, stories, and discoveries that helped shape Western culture.
Top Highlights
“But biography has often been allotted to writers, who seem very little acquainted with the nature of their task, or very negligent about the performance. They rarely afford any other account than might be collected from publick papers, but imagine themselves writing a life, when they exhibit a chronological series of actions or preferments; and have so little regard to the manners or behaviour of their heroes, that more knowledge may be gained of a man’s real character, by a short conversation with one of his servants, than from a formal and studied narrative, begun with his pedigree, and ended with his funeral.” (Page 3)
“If nothing but the bright side of characters should be shewn, we should sit down in despondency, and think it utterly impossible to imitate them in any thing. The sacred writers, (he observed,) related the vicious as well as the virtuous actions of men; which had this moral effect, that it kept mankind from despair, into which otherwise they would naturally fall, were they not supported by the recollection that others had offended like themselves, and by penitence and amendment of life had been restored to the favour of Heaven.’” (Page 458)
“Be not angry that you cannot make others as you wish them to be, since you cannot make yourself as you wish to be.’” (Page 371)
“He had a peculiar facility in seizing at once what was valuable in any book, without submitting to the labour” (Page 15)
“I will venture to say that he will be seen in this work more completely than any man who has ever yet lived.” (Page 2)
- Title: Life of Samuel Johnson, LL.D.
- Author: James Boswell
- Edition: Second Edition
- Series: Great Books of the Western World
- Volume: 41
- Publishers: Encyclopedia Britannica, Robert P. Gwinn
- Print Publication Date: 1990
- Logos Release Date: 2016
- Language: English
- Resources: 1
- Format: Digital › Logos Research Edition
- Subjects: Johnson, Samuel, 1709-1784; Authors, English › 18th century--Biography
- ISBNs: 0852295316, 9780852295311
- Resource ID: LLS:GBWW41
- Resource Type: text.monograph.biography
- Metadata Last Updated: 2022-09-30T00:11:36Z